Elizabeth Silva

UCSF University of California, San Francisco | UCSF

Universities are at long last undertaking efforts to collect and disseminate information about student career outcomes, after decades of calls to action. Organizations such as Rescuing Biomedical Research and Future of Research brought this issue to the forefront of graduate education, and the second Future of Biomedical Graduate and Postdoctoral T...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002458.].

The oversupply of postdoctoral scholars relative to available faculty positions has led to calls for better assessment of career outcomes. Here, we report the results of a study of postdoctoral outcomes at the University of California, San Francisco, and suggest that institutions have an obligation to determine where their postdoc alumni are employ...

There is growing concern about lack of scientific rigor and transparent reporting across many preclinical fields of biological research. Poor experimental design and lack of transparent reporting can result in conscious or unconscious experimental bias producing results that are not replicable. The Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Tria...

Clearance of apoptotic cells (efferocytosis) is achieved through phagocytosis by professional or amateur phagocytes. It is critical for tissue homeostasis and remodeling in all animals. Failure in this process can contribute to the development of inflammatory autoimmune or neurodegenerative diseases. We found previously that the PALL-SCF E3-ubiquit...

The lack of reproducibility of preclinical research is a significant and growing problem which slows basic research and leads to fruitless clinical trials. An increasing number of reports have found discrepancies in published preclinical studies across scientific disciplines. For example: * Amgen found that 47 of 53 “landmark” oncology publications...

This is an open letter concerning the recent launch of the new open access journal, Science Advances. In addition to the welcome diversification in journal choices for authors looking for open access venues, there are many positive aspects of Science Advances: its broad STEM scope, its interest in cross-disciplinary research, and the offering of fe...

Apoptosis, a genetically programmed cell death, allows for homeostasis and tissue remodelling during development of all multi-cellular organisms. Phagocytes swiftly recognize, engulf and digest apoptotic cells. Yet, to date the molecular mechanisms underlying this phagocytic process are still poorly understood. To delineate the molecular mechanisms...

Nitric oxide (NO) is a key regulator of diverse biological processes, including the modulation of blood vessel tone [1]. Nitric oxide synthase (NOS), which oxidizes arginine to produce NO and citrulline [2], is found in organisms from bacteria to humans. Despite the impact of NO on physiology, mice lacking all three mammalian NOS isoforms develop t...

Most insertional mutagenesis screens of Drosophila performed to date have not used target chromosomes that have been checked for their suitability for phenotypic screens for viable phenotypes. To address this, we have generated a selection of stocks carrying either isogenized second chromosomes or isogenized third chromosomes, in a genetic backgrou...

The Drosophila tumor suppressor gene fat encodes a large cadherin that regulates growth and a form of tissue organization known as planar cell polarity (PCP). Fat regulates growth via the Hippo kinase pathway, which controls expression of genes promoting cell proliferation and inhibiting apoptosis (reviewed in). The Hippo pathway is highly conserve...

Phagocytosis is important during development and in the immune response for the removal of apoptotic cells and pathogens, yet its molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. In Caenorhabditis elegans, the CED2/5/10/12 pathway regulates actin during phagocytosis of apoptotic cells, whereas the role of the CED1/6/7 pathway in phagocytosis is unclear....

Proper development of all multicellular organisms involves programmed apoptosis. Completion of this process requires removal of the resulting cell corpses through phagocytosis by their neighbors or by macrophages. Studies in C. elegans have been fruitful in the genetic dissection of key pathways, but they lack the professional immune system of high...

Many cells die by apoptosis during animal development. Apoptotic cells are rapidly removed through phagocytosis by their neighbors or by macrophages. To genetically dissect this process, we performed an in vivo screen for genes required for efficient phagocytosis of apoptotic cells by Drosophila macrophages and identified pallbearer (pall), which e...

The tight control of cell proliferation and cell death is essential to normal tissue development, and the loss of this control is a hallmark of cancers. Cell growth and cell death are coordinately regulated during development by the Hippo signaling pathway. The Hippo pathway consists of the Ste20 family kinase Hippo, the WW adaptor protein Salvador...

This report describes a novel strategy for isolating Drosophila mutants with conditional eye phenotypes that should be generally applicable for identifying genes required for cellular responses to specific drugs. To test the strategy, we screened 3 of the 5 major chromosome arms for hydroxyurea- and (or) caffeine-sensitive (huc) mutants, and isolat...

ATM is a large, multifunctional protein kinase that regulates responses required for surviving DNA damage: including DNA repair, apoptosis, and cell cycle checkpoints. Here, we show that Drosophila ATM function is essential for normal adult development. Extensive, inappropriate apoptosis occurs in proliferating atm mutant tissues, and in clonally d...

In multi-cellular organisms, failure to properly regulate cell-cycle progression can result in inappropriate cell death or uncontrolled cell division leading to tumor formation. To guard against such events, conserved regulatory mechanisms called "checkpoints" block progression into mitosis in response to DNA damage and incomplete replication, as w...

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Molecular Biology and Genetics, Department of Biological Sciences. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2002. Includes bibliographical references.